396 ERRATA REGEPTA. 



Carpenters have a tool which they call the rabbet-plane. Ita 

 name has come from robot, the French word for a plane. To plane 

 is rahoter. It describes the action of the arm while the operation is 

 going on. It is the Italian ributtare, to thrust against or back, 

 affected by rabattre. {To rebut is to thrust back.) There is a ma- 

 -chine forgiving a gloss by pressure, called a calender; in French, 

 valandre. It gave to Grilpin's benevolent friend in Cowper's ballad, 

 a title which sometimes puzzles young readers. " Cylinder " was a 

 term too scientific for the artisans of a former day. It accordingly 

 took on a sound more familiar. In French, " calandre " is identical 

 with the name of a kind of plover. — In like manner the peculiarly- 

 formed compasses used to measure " calibres " have become, in the 

 popular dialect, callipers. (In "calibre" verbal numismatists detect 

 *'3equilibriura.") — Andiron, for the now almost extinct Jlre-do^, is 

 a singular-looking word. It is the Old French andier, of which 

 the Late-Latin was andena, one signification of which is a "rack 

 for the spit." Some persons please themselves by imagining that 

 andiron is end-iron and even hand-iron. — The French themselves 

 have vernacularized the word into landier, by incorporating the 

 article, as they have done also in loriot, lierre, lendemain, levier, 

 and possibly other cases. — When we remember the serai-trans- 

 parent material formerly used in the construction of lanterns, it is 

 not to be wondered at that the name of this "useful light" 

 developed itself into lanthorn. {Lanterna is laterna, akin in root 

 to the Germ, lauter, hright.) — Dama^lian, in Khorassan, once 

 famous for glass-ware, has been vernacularized by us into demijohn. 

 The French convert it, or_,something else, into dame Jeanne, a name 

 tending to shew that our ancestors, while saluting their tall cans as 

 jacks, were not so peculiar in styling lesser vessels gills, Gill being, 

 as we know, short for Gilian, i. e. Juliana. — Coverlid and coverlet 

 are both the French couvre-lit. Cotelette, "little side," we inge- 

 niously naturalize into cutlet. — Counterpane expresses the notion of 

 symmetrically-arranged squares. It is the French contre-pointe, 

 courte-poinie, and coulte-pointe, vernacular graspings, all three, at the 

 Latin culcita puncta, a soft quilt-ed appliance to be spread upon a 

 couch. — Out of hamao, the native term for what loe call a hammocJc, 

 the Dutch have contrived the descriptive vernacularism hang-onatte. 



If not "from China to Peru," at least from Ireland to Cashmere' 

 local names have given us vernacularisms for fabrics of the loom and 



